Blog of the teachers and students at Bilingual IES Clara Campoamor

2012 United Nations World Water Day

Today 22nd March United Nations celebrate World Water Day. The objective is to focus our attention on the sustainable management of fresh water. As you know, fresh water is a very valuable resource we need to preserve, especially in our own country and in years like this 2012. It is not raining too much and we risk a possible drought.

Do you know how much water we spend every day? Do you know how we spend this water? What do we use water for? Just for drinking? The answers to these questions will probably surprise and even shock you. Most of the water used goes to farming activities and just 7% goes to human consumption. Industrial activity, for example making paper, is the other great consumer of water. It is thus important to know what the water footprint is. It is a way of measuring our direct and indirect water use. It is the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by an individual or a community or produced by a given business. We drink two or three litres of water a day but how much water is needed to produce the food we eat? How how many litres of water are needed to produce one kilo of meat? Check this fantastic animation on water use here. Feel free to browse the UN website since there are other fantastic animations also available.

What do you think we can do to reduce this huge consumption of water? Any ideas are welcome. Any suggestions for our school?

And remember we are celebrating our Recycling Week next week so don’t forget to bring your empty two-litre bottles to school (ask your Technology teacher).